The present invention relates to lipolytic enzymes, methods of using and producing lipolytic enzymes, as well as a nucleic acid sequence encoding lipolytic enzymes.
Lipolytic enzymes (such as lipases and phospholipases) are capable of hydrolyzing carboxylic ester bonds in a substrate to release carboxylic acids. They are known to be useful, e.g., in baking and detergents.
A lipase/phospholipase from Fusarium oxysporum and its sequence are known. WO 98/26057.
The inventors have isolated a lipolytic enzyme from Fusarium sulphureum. The inventors also isolated the gene encoding the novel lipolytic enzyme and cloned it into an E. coli strain.
Accordingly, the invention provides a lipolytic enzyme which may be a polypeptide having an amino acid sequence as the mature peptide shown in SEQ ID NO: 1.
Further, the lipolytic enzyme of the invention may be a polypeptide encoded by the lipolytic enzyme encoding part of the DNA sequence cloned into a plasmid present in Escherichia coli deposit number DSM 13539.
The lipolytic enzyme may also be an analogue of the polypeptide defined above which:
i) has at least 85% homology with said polypeptide,
ii) is immunologically reactive with an antibody raised against said polypeptide in purified form,
iii) is an allelic variant of said polypeptide,
Finally, the lipolytic enzyme of the invention may be a polypeptide which is encoded by a nucleic acid sequence which hybridizes under high stringency conditions with a complementary strand of the nucleic acid sequence of SEQ ID NO: 1 encoding the mature polypeptide or a subsequence thereof having at least 100 nucleotides.
The nucleic acid sequence of the invention may comprise a nucleic acid sequence which encodes the lipolytic enzyme described above, or it may encode a lipolytic enzyme and comprise:
a) the DNA sequence encoding a mature lipolytic enzyme cloned into a plasmid present in Escherichia coli DSM 13539,
b) the DNA sequence encoding a mature lipolytic enzyme shown in SEQ ID NO: 1, or
c) an analogue of the DNA sequence defined in a) or b) which
i) has at least 80% homology with said DNA sequence, or
ii) hybridizes at high stringency with said DNA sequence, its complementary strand or a subsequence thereof.
Other aspects of the invention provide a recombinant expression vector comprising the DNA sequence, and a cell transformed with the DNA sequence or the recombinant expression vector.
A comparison with full-length prior-art sequences shows that the mature amino acid sequence of the invention has 82% homology with the lipase/phospholipase from Fusarium oxysporum described above, and the corresponding DNA sequence of the invention shows 77% homology with that of the F. oxysporum enzyme.
A lipolytic enzyme of the invention may be derived from a strain of Fusarium, particularly F. sulphureum, using probes designed on the basis of the DNA sequences in this specification.
A strain of Escherichia coli containing a gene encoding lipolytic enzyme was deposited by the inventors under the terms of the Budapest Treaty with the DSMZxe2x80x94Deutshe Sammmlung von Microorganismen und Zellkulturen GmbH, Mascheroder Weg 1b, D-38124 Braunschweig DE, Germany. The deposit date was Jun. 15, 2000, and the accession number was DSM 13539.
The lipolytic enzyme is able to hydrolyze carboxylic ester bonds and is classified as EC 3.1.1 according to Enzyme Nomenclature 1992, Academic Press, Inc. The enzyme has lipase (triacylglycerol lipase) activity (EC 3.1.1.3) and may also have phospholipase activity.
The expression vector of the invention typically includes control sequences encoding a promoter, operator, ribosome binding site, translation initiation signal, and, optionally, a selectable marker, a transcription terminator, a repressor gene or various activator genes. The vector may be an autonomously replicating vector, or it may be integrated into the host cell genome.
The lipolytic enzyme of the invention may be produced by transforming a suitable host cell with a DNA sequence encoding the lipolytic enzyme, cultivating the transformed organism under conditions permitting the production of the enzyme, and recovering the enzyme from the culture.
The host organism is preferably a eukaryotic cell, in particular a fungal cell, such as a yeast cell or a filamentous fungal cell, e.g. a strain of Aspergillus, Fusarium, Trichoderma or Saccharomyces, particularly A. niger, A. oryzae, F. graminearum, F. sambucinum, F. cerealis or S. cerevisiae. The production of the lipolytic enzyme in such host organisms may be done by the general methods described in EP 238,023 (Novo Nordisk), WO 96/00787 (Novo Nordisk) or EP 244,234 (Alko).
The hybridization is used to indicate that a given DNA sequence is analogous to a nucleotide probe corresponding to a DNA sequence of the invention. The hybridization conditions are described in detail below.
Suitable conditions for determining hybridization between a nucleotide probe and a homologous DNA or RNA sequence involves presoaking of the filter containing the DNA fragments or RNA to hybridize in 5xc3x97SSC (standard saline citrate) for 10 min, and prehybridization of the filter in a solution of 5xc3x97SSC (Sambrook et al. 1989), 5xc3x97Denhardt""s solution (Sambrook et al. 1989), 0.5% SDS and 100 xcexcg/ml of denatured sonicated salmon sperm DNA (Sambrook et al. 1989), followed by hybridization in the same solution containing a random-primed (Feinberg, A. P. and Vogelstein, B. (1983) Anal. Biochem. 132:6-13), 32P-dCTP-labeled (specific activity  greater than 1xc3x97109 cpm/xcexcg) probe for 12 hours at approx. 45xc2x0 C. The filter is then washed two times for 30 minutes in 2xc3x97SSC, 0.5% SDS at a temperature of at least 55xc2x0 C., more preferably at least 60xc2x0 C., more preferably at least 65xc2x0 C., even more preferably at least 70xc2x0 C., especially at least 75xc2x0 C.
Molecules to which the oligonucleotide probe hybridizes under these conditions are detected using a x-ray film.
The present invention also includes lipolytic enzymes and nucleotide sequences encoding same that have homology to the disclosed sequences. More preferably, the lipolytic enzymes and the nucleotide sequences of the invention may have homologies to the disclosed sequences of at least 85%, at least 90% or at least 95%, e.g. at least 96%, at least 97%, at least 98%.
For purposes of the present invention, alignments of sequences and calculation of homology scores were done using a Needleman-Wunsch alignment (i.e. global alignment), useful for both protein and DNA alignments. The default scoring matrices BLOSUM50 and the identity matrix are used for protein and DNA alignments respectively. The penalty for the first residue in a gap is xe2x88x9212 for proteins and xe2x88x9216 for DNA, while the penalty for additional residues in a gap is xe2x88x922 for proteins and xe2x88x924 for DNA. Alignment is from the FASTA package version v20u6 (W. R. Pearson and D. J. Lipman (1988), xe2x80x9cImproved Tools for Biological Sequence Analysisxe2x80x9d, PNAS 85:2444-2448, and W. R. Pearson (1990) xe2x80x9cRapid and Sensitive Sequence Comparison with FASTP and FASTAxe2x80x9d, Methods in Enzymology, 183:63-98).
A substrate for lipase is prepared an emulsion of 5% by volume of tributyrin (glycerin tributyrate) using 0.1% gum Arabic as emulsifier. The hydrolysis of tributyrin at 30xc2x0 C. at pH 7 is followed in a pH-stat titration experiment. One unit of lipase activity (1 LU) equals the amount of enzyme capable of releasing 1 xcexcmol butyric acid/min at the standard conditions. 1 KLU=1000 LU.
The lipolytic enzyme of the invention can be used in various industrial application of lipolytic enzymes, e.g. in baking, detergents, diglyceride synthesis (EP 307154), acidolysis, interesterification (WO 8802775), ester hydrolysis, oil degumming (JP-A 2-153997, U.S. Pat. No. 5,264,367), production of lysolecithin (JP patent 2794574, JP-B 6-087751) and in the process described in PCT/DK 00/00109.
The lipolytic enzyme of the invention can be used in the preparation of dough, bread and cakes, e.g. to improve the elasticity of the bread or cake. Thus, the lipolytic enzyme can be used in a process for making bread, comprising adding the lipolytic enzyme to the ingredients of a dough, kneading the dough and baking the dough to make the bread. This can be done in analogy with WO 9404035 and EP 585988.
The variant may be used as a detergent additive, e.g. at a concentration (expressed as pure enzyme protein) of 0.001-10 (e.g. 0.01-1) mg per gram of detergent or 0.001-100 (e.g. 0.01-10) mg per liter of wash liquor.
The detergent composition of the invention may for example be formulated as a hand or machine laundry detergent composition including a laundry additive composition suitable for pre-treatment of stained fabrics and a rinse added fabric softener composition, or be formulated as a detergent composition for use in general household hard surface cleaning operations. In a laundry detergent, the variant may be effective for the removal of fatty stains, for whiteness maintenance and for dingy cleanup. A laundry detergent composition may be formulated as described in WO 97/04079, WO 97/07202, WO 97/41212, PCT/DK WO 98/08939 and WO 97/43375.
The detergent composition of the invention may particularly be formulated for hand or machine dishwashing operations. e.g. as described in GB 2,247,025 (Unilever) or WO 99/01531 (Procter and Gamble). In a dishwashing composition, the variant may be effective for removal of greasy/oily stains, for prevention of the staining/discoloration of the dishware and plastic components of the dishwasher by highly colored components and the avoidance of lime soap deposits on the dishware.
Unless otherwise stated, DNA manipulations and transformations were performed using standard methods of molecular biology as described in Sambrook et al. (1989) Molecular cloning: A laboratory manual, Cold Spring Harbor lab., Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.; Ausubel, F. M. et al. (eds.) xe2x80x9cCurrent protocols in Molecular Biologyxe2x80x9d, John Wiley and Sons, 1995; Harwood, C. R., and Cutting, S. M. (eds.) xe2x80x9cMolecular Biological Methods for Bacillusxe2x80x9d. John Wiley and Sons, 1990.
Enzymes for DNA manipulations (e.g. restriction endonucleases, ligases etc.) are obtainable from New England Biolabs, Inc. and were used according to the manufacturer""s instructions.
pT7Blue (Invitrogen, Netherlands)
pCaHj483 is described in WO 9704079 and WO 9942566.
LA PCR(trademark) in vitro Cloning Kit (TaKaRa) was used for cloning and was used according to the manufacturer""s instructions.
E. coli JM109 (TOYOBO, Japan)
A. oryzae BECh-2 is described in Danish patent application PA 1999 01726. It is a mutant of JaL 228 (described in WO 98/12300) which is a mutant of IFO 4177.
Cove: 342.3 g/L Sucrose, 20 ml/L COVE salt solution, 10 mM Acetamide, 30 g/L noble agar.
Cove-2: 30 g/L Sucrose, 20 ml/L COVE salt solution, 10 mM, Acetamide, 30 g/L noble agar.
Cove salt solution: per liter 26 g KCl, 26 g MgSO4-7aq, 76 g KH2PO4, 50 ml Cove trace metals.
Cove trace metals: per liter 0.04 g NaB407-10aq, 0.4 g CuSO4-5aq, 1.2 g FeSO4-7aq, 0.7 g MnSO4-aq, 0.7 g Na2MoO2-2aq, 0.7 g ZnSO4-7aq.
AMG trace metals: per liter 14.3 g ZnSO4-7aq, 2.5 g CuSO4-5aq, 0.5 g NiCl2, 13.8 g FeSO4, 8.5 g MnSO4, 3.0 g citric acid.
YPG: 4 g/L Yeast extract, 1 g/L KH2PO4, 0.5 g/L MgSO4-7aq, 5 g/L Glucose, pH 6.0.
STC: 0.8 M Sorbitol, 25 mM Tris pH 8, 25 mM CaCl2.
STPC: 40% PEG4000 in STC buffer.
Cove top agarose: 342.3 g/L Sucrose, 20 ml/L COVE salt solution, 10 mM Acetamide, 10 g/L low melt agarose.
MS-9: per liter 30 g soybean powder, 20 g glycerol, pH 6.0.
MDU-pH5: per liter 45 g maltose-1aq, 7 g yeast extract, 12 g KH2PO4, 1 g MgSO4-7aq, 2 g K2SO4, 0.5 ml AMG trace metal solution and 25 g 2-morpholinoethanesulfonic acid, pH 5.0.